Many vehicles are equipped with sensors and electronics that together help create a collision warning or collision avoidance system. As a vehicle approaches a target which could potentially cause a collision, the sensors receive information about the relationship of the vehicle's position to the target and issue a warning to the driver.
In vehicular collision warning systems, the occurrence of false events has the potential to lead to annoyance or even an unsafe situation for the driver of the vehicle. For example, if the driver of the vehicle is constantly getting warnings that are not clearly related to a threatening situation, then this could quickly prove to be annoying and cause the driver to lose confidence in the system.
One example of a collision avoidance system is disclosed in U.S. Patent Publication No. 2011/0040481.